for Madame Bergeret’s sake, what ill-conducted being had given birth to such a clumsy cub as Number Five. It took Deval a long time to make sure that he, and none other, was actually Number Five. He had, in fact, to be put under arrest before he was convinced on the subject. Even then he could not see why the honour of Madame Deval, his mother, should be called in question because he himself was not exactly in line. His sense of justice was outraged by his mother’s being unexpectedly declared responsible in this matter, and at the end of four months he was still a prey to melancholy amazement at the idea.
“Your friend Deval,” answered M. Bergeret, “put a wrong construction on a warlike speech that I should be inclined to count among those which exalt men’s moral tone. Such speeches, in fact, arouse the spirit of emulation by exciting a desire to earn the good-conduct stripes, which confer on their wearers the right to make similar speeches in their turn, speeches which obviously stamp the speaker of them as head and shoulders above those humble beings to whom they are addressed. The authority of officers in the army should never be weakened, as was done in a recent circular issued by a War Minister, which laid down the law that officers and non-commissioned officers were to avoid the practice of addressing the men with the contemptuous ‘thou.’ The minister, himself a well-bred, courteous, urbane and honourable man, was full of the idea of the dignified position of the citizen soldier and failed, therefore, to perceive that the power of scorning an inferior is the guiding principle in emulation and the foundation-stone of all governance. Sergeant Lebrec spoke like a hero who is schooling heroes, for, being a philologist, I am able to reconstruct the original form his speech took. This being the case, I have no hesitation in declaring that, in my opinion, Sergeant Lebrec rose to sublimity when he associated the good fame of a family with the port of a conscript, when he thus linked the life of Number Five, even before he saw the light, with the regiment and the flag. For, in truth, does not the issue of all warfare rest on the discipline of the recruit?
“After this, you will probably tell me that I am indulging in the weakness common to all commentators and reading into the text of my author meanings which he never intended. I grant you that there is a certain element of unconsciousness in Sergeant Lebrec’s memorable speech. But therein lies the genius of it. Unaware of his own range, he hurls his bolts broadcast.”
M. Roux answered with a smile that there certainly was an unconscious element in Sergeant Lebrec’s inspiration. He quite agreed with M. Bergeret there. But Madame Bergeret interposed drily:
“I don’t understand you at all, Lucien. You always laugh when there is nothing funny, and really one never knows whether you are joking or serious. It’s positively impossible to talk rationally to you.”
“My wife reasons after the dean’s fashion,” said M. Bergeret, “and the only thing to do with either is to give in.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Madame Bergeret, “you do well to talk about the dean! You have always set yourself to annoy him and now you are paying for your folly. You have also managed to fall out with the rector. I met him on Sunday when I was out with the girls and he hardly so much as bowed.” And turning towards the young soldier, she continued:
“I know that my husband is very much attached to you, Monsieur Roux. You are his favourite pupil and he foretells a brilliant future for you.”
M. Roux’s swarthy face, with its mat of frizzy hair, flashed into a bold smile that showed the brilliant whiteness of his teeth.
“Do try, Monsieur Roux, to get my husband to use a little tact with people who may be useful to him. His conduct is making life a howling wilderness for us all.”
“Surely not, Madame,” murmured M. Roux, turning the conversation.
“The peasants,” said he, “drag out a wretched three years of service. They suffer horribly, but no one ever guesses it, for they are quite inarticulate when it comes to expressing subtleties. Loving the land as they do with all the intensity of animal passion, when they are separated from it their existence is full of deep, silent, monotonous melancholy, with nothing whatever to distract them from their sense of exile and imprisonment, save fear of their officers and weariness of their occupation. Everything around them is strange and incomprehensible. In my company, for instance, there are two Bretons who have not learnt the colonel’s name after six months’ training. Every morning we are drawn up before the sergeant to repeat this name with them, for every one in the regiment receives exactly the same instruction. Our colonel’s name is Dupont. It’s the same in all our exercises: quick, clever men are kept back for ever to wait for the dolts.”
M. Bergeret inquired whether, like Sergeant Lebrec, the officers also cultivated the art of martial eloquence.
“Not at all,” said M. Roux. “My captain—quite a young man he is, too—is the very pink of courtesy. He is an æsthete, a Rosicrucian, and he paints pictures of angels and pallid virgins, against a background of pink and green skies. I devise the legends for his pictures, and whilst Deval is on fatigue-duty in the barrack-square, I am on duty with the captain, who employs me to produce verses for him. He really is a charming fellow. His name is Marcel de Lagère; he exhibits at L’Œuvre under the pseudonym of Cyne.”
“Is he a hero too?” asked M. Bergeret.
“Say rather a Saint George,” answered M. Roux. “He has conceived a mystic ideal of the military profession and declares that it is the perfect way of life. We are marching, unawares, to an unknown goal. Piously, solemnly, chastely, we advance towards the altar of mystic, fated sacrifice. He is exquisite. I am teaching him to write vers libre and prose poems and he is beginning to compose prose sketches of military life. He is happy, placid and gentle, and the only sorrow he has is the flag. He considers its red, white and blue an intolerably violent colour scheme and yearns for one of rose-pink or lilac. His dreams are of the banner of Heaven. ‘If even,’ he says sadly, ‘the three colours rose from a flower-stalk, like the three flames of the oriflamme, it would be bearable. But when they are perpendicular, they cut the floating folds painfully and ridiculously.’ He suffers, but he bears his suffering bravely and patiently. As I said before, he is a true Saint George.”
“From your description,” said Madame Bergeret, “I feel keenly for the poor young man.” So speaking, she threw a severe glance in M. Bergeret’s direction.
“But aren’t the other officers amazed at him?” asked M. Bergeret.
“Not at all,” answered M. Roux. “For at mess, or in society, he says nothing about his opinions and he looks just like any other officer.”
“And what do the men think of him?”
“The men never come in contact with their officers in quarters.”
“You will dine with us, won’t you, Monsieur Roux?” said Madame Bergeret. “It will give us great pleasure if you will stay.”
Her words instantly suggested to M. Bergeret’s mind the vision of a pie, for whenever Madame Bergeret had informally invited anyone to dinner she always ordered a pie from Magloire, the pastry-cook, and usually a pie without meat, as being more dainty. By a purely mental impetus that had no connection with greed, M. Bergeret now called up a picture of an egg or fish pie, smoking in a blue-patterned dish on a damask napkin. Homely and prophetic vision! But if Madame Bergeret invited M. Roux to dinner, she must think a great deal of him, for it was most unusual for Amélie to offer the pleasures of her humble table to a stranger. She dreaded the expense and fuss of doing so, and justly, for the days when she had a guest to dinner were made hideous by the noise of broken dishes, by yells of alarm and tears of rage from the young maid, Euphémie, by an acrid smoke-reek that filled the whole flat and by a smell of cooking which found its way to the study and disturbed M. Bergeret among the
